Monthly Archives: July 2015

Googly eyes, framed faces and lots and lots of games!
Arthur and I had a lovely rainy afternoon reading through the stories in the Furchester Hotel magazine from CBeebies.

Aimed at 3-6 year olds, it’s bright and colourful it had a lovely mix of educational and fun stuff. Arthur loved creating portraits and he thought the stories set in the hotel were funny! I particularly liked the one about making toast as Arthur is currently obsessed with ‘cooking bread’.

He also put his cutting skills to the test and made the mask at the back of the magazine and it’s now sitting pride of place on his bedroom shelf. It had a good mix of early curriculum stuff hidden in the games and stories, a little maths, lots of wrds and reading and some puzzles too – all ackaged in the perfect way for a four-year-old.

All in all a lovely little magazine which filled a couple of hours, lots to do, some nice games and I thought the free gift was a really nice one. Not a piece of plastic tat but something children could actually do.

And so it begins. Arthur stayed for two hours at school today in preparation for his start in September.

Gazing around the bright, overwhelmingly new room we looked at each other and off we went. He hesitated at the water table while some boys played and he hung back and my heart lurched just a little bit.

“Hello I’m Arthur” he said, a little nervous, wiping his floppy fringe out of his eyes. They looked at him and kept playing and a little of me cried inside. But that’s life and it’s absolutely right he should put himself out there and, that at moments, he will face rejection.

Eventually they all played together but to face and conquer a sense of rejection is so very important. At home and at nursery he is safe and accepted and never rejected.

A sense of resourceful courage and grit is such a beautiful life lesson and all the more important as it’s something I would struggle to teach him. I could and would never reject him or turn him down. But that someone does, means my boy will dig deep and come out the other side.

I left him for just two hours. At first he clung to me but after a while I said:” I’m off now Arts, see you soon”. A very selfish tiny part of me wanted him to cling a little more to me. But he looked and said ‘ok’. That was when I knew he’d be fine. Me and my boy knew, at that moment, it would all be ok.

When I picked him up he was running round eating veg from their garden and grabbing my hand to show me the guinea pigs. All at once I saw a lifetime of moments tumbling into one. School pick ups, play dates, fights, fallouts and homework…all of it colliding it that one afternoon.

Life is changing and while I’m a little bereft at the thought of losing our special time together, I know it’s time he goes out there and learns the things I could never teach him. It’s also time for me to learn a few home truths too. We’ve ticked along on an even keel, both needing each other, an equality which charted our lives from the day he was born.

I think he’ll need me a little less, or maybe just a little differently soon and I have to accept the same will never be true for me.